Eight things I love about iOS

The best new features in iOS 13With iOS 13 set to roll out on September 19, ZDNet’s Beth Mauder walks you through her five favorite new features and how you can add them to your iPhone. Read more: https://zd.net/2QbuNNR

#1: No bloatware

After my love affair with Android, I do appreciate the simplicity and cleanliness of iOS. No bloatware, random junk, or bundled apps. Sure, iOS comes with its own apps, and the integration around iMessage, iCloud, and Safari is quite tight, but you can still work around these quite easily. While some would consider the bundled apps as bloatware, they are all useful, aren’t stuffed with ads, and most can be deleted and removed.

Overall, the fact that I don’t have to uninstall a whole bunch of crap off of an iOS install is a massive win for the platform.

The tight integration with third-party password managers is another iOS feature that I value, and this goes a long way to improving user security and safety.

#3: Dark mode

I’ve used dark mode on a number of devices, but the implementation in iOS feels the best. There’s a lot more to dark mode than just making everything black, and Apple has clearly put a lot of thought and effort into building a dark mode theme that works, and allowing app developers to make their apps compatible.

#4: Video editing on the iPhone via the Camera app

This is a super useful. No more do I have to mess around with iMovie or some third-party app to make simple edits. I can do them directly from the app after shooting.

#5: Split View and Slide Over on iPad

The ability to have two or three apps up simultaneously on the iPad is a huge productivity booster. It’s not as smooth as multitasking on say Windows or macOS, but it allows me to get more work done on an iPad than ever, and means that I need to lug around my MacBook Pro a lot less.

#6: The on-screen keyboard just works

I’ve tried and tested more on-screen keyboards than I can count (or remember), and every time I keep coming back to the stock iOS keyboard, I’m always pleasantly surprised. And now that the iOS 13 keyboard has swipe support, I feel like what used to be a good keyboard has become even better.

I can literally type tens of hundreds of words on my iPhone without much effort, and if I switch to my iPad, my productivity is boosted even further. While I still believe that you can’t beat a good physical keyboard, on-screen keyboards are now giving their physical counterparts a run for their money.

#7: Stunning photography with a single click

It always impresses me how good photos taken on the iPhone are, especially considering how there are smartphones out there with far better camera hardware. If I want to take one-click photos that I can use with a limited amount of faffing about with sliders and post-processing, I always turn to my iPhone.

#8: External flash drive storage on the iPad Pro

As much as I like storing my digital stuff in the cloud, nothing beats being able to move data about on external drives, and having the ability to plug these into my iPad Pro.

Maybe it’s a throwback to my old sneakernet days, or maybe it’s that I work with a lot of big files that are cumbersome to move to and from the cloud (especially when I’m away from my desk), but external storage drives are still a big part of my life.